Baker, Howard

ORAL HISTORY OF HOWARD BAKER, JR.
Interviewed by Jim Campbell, Amy Fitzgerald, Ph.D., and D. Ray Smith
Filmed by Matt Mullins
August 19, 2009
Mr. Mullins: Please state your name and where you live so we can get a final audio check.
Sen. Baker: We’ll do that. My name is Howard Baker. Howard H. Baker Jr. I live in Huntsville, Scott County, Tennessee, which, by the way, is the center of the universe.
Mr. Campbell: I’m pretty well convinced of that after our travels.
Mr. Mullins: If we can do one last cell phone check to make sure cell phones are off please.
Sen. Baker: I gave you mine, Fred. You’ve got to turn it off.
Mr. Campbell: I’ve got to figure out how to turn mine off.
Sen. Baker: I know it. That’s why I gave it to Fred.
Mr. Campbell: We’re kind of going to do this chronologically, starting back with your earliest memories of Oak Ridge and moving forward.
Sen. Baker: Okay.
Mr. Campbell: We���re doing this, and I want to set the stage a little bit, as part of a Preserve America grant. And we’re trying to collect the stories of Oak Ridge, on video, from as many people that grew up there and were part of its formation, as we possibly can. You’re one of the first people we’ve done this with, so you’re our experiment.
Sen. Baker: All right. I’m willing to be an experiment. It’s true, I grew up when Oak Ridge was not Oak Ridge. Indeed, my dad was district attorney of the 19th – then the 19th Judicial District, which included Anderson County. And I remember vividly him coming home at night, saying, “I don’t know what they’re doing over there, but there’s so many of them,” and says, “I have responsibility for prosecuting criminal cases in that area, and I have one assistant, and as far as I can figure there are fifteen thousand people,” later many more than that, “and I fear they all get drunk on Saturday night, and that’s all I know about the place.” But of course as time went on it was clear there was a major installation. And it was – by the time it was opened, I guess it was sixty thousand or thereabouts, fifty or sixty thousand, but it was one of the major construction projects in the country if not the principal construction project in World War II, and I made a speech once in Oak Ridge, long after it was created, in which I referred to it as Black Oak Ridge, which indeed it was. That was the original name. And, of course, it was an unincorporated municipality for many years. And the state and local facilities had the responsibility for governance and protection, except for the military protection. And that was what my father complained about initially was he was overloaded, understaffed, which continued, but I remember that – I don’t remember the year, but when Oak Ridge was in the height of its construction period, that my dad took me over there once to see it, and I recall vividly that we had to have someone in the compound call the gate, and vouch for us. And we had to sit there in the car until that was done, and then we had an escort through the gate in the facility. Of course there’s nothing there except construction mostly, but even then I did not know what they were doing. He didn’t either, and we all knew it was an important thing and huge, but we didn’t know what or where it was going. I remember one night at dinner my dad was talking about what they were doing, he said, “I don’t know what they’re doing, but I suppose I’m not supposed to know what they’re doing, but I observe that there are freight carloads of stuff that come in every day, and as far as I can tell, nothing goes out. So whatever it is is unique.” And indeed that was so. So it was very much a construction project when I first visited, and it changed dramatically as time went on. Also at that time, it was not a city. It was simply a part of Anderson County and Roane County, and did not have city facilities except informally, but that grew and grew to the place where finally by act of Congress, which my dad was involved with, they were authorized to have a city government, and ultimately to sell property. I remember that was one of the big issues in my dad’s early political campaigns was authorizing the sale of housing in Oak Ridge to private individuals.
Mr. Campbell: Atomic Communities Act of 1954.
Sen. Baker: I’m sure that’s right. I’m sure that’s right. Well I think it was a great success, but I think some of those buildings are maybe still there, but anyway it was a dramatic change. I don’t know where to go from there, except to say that a little later in my life when I, like all my contemporaries just about, was in the military. I was in the Navy right after high school, as almost everyone was. And I was offered the opportunity to be in one of the programs in the – and a choice between a Navy program, an Air Force program, or an Army program. I don’t know to this day why I picked the Navy, but I did. And was in the Navy V-12 program, and at the time Oak Ridge was acknowledged and it was known worldwide for what it was doing, I was at Melville, Rhode Island at a P.T. Boat training school. I remember vividly the announcement that we had dropped the atom bomb, and I remember as well hearing on the radio that is was done largely, that it was prepared largely at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Which really was the first concrete information that I had about what in the world they were doing, and I also remember that I believe without exception my classmates in that training school cheered wildly, because – not because of the technological advance, but because that meant we were not going to have to go to the Pacific, and indeed that was what happened. But anyway, my affiliation, or my knowledge, or association with Oak Ridge continued from that point on, and when I got out the Navy, I went to law school at the University of Tennessee.
Mr. Campbell: And you met a character named Gene Joyce.
Sen. Baker: I did. I did indeed, and Gene was a good friend, and I admired him greatly, and he was a rabid democrat as was his law partner Judge Joyce. No, that wasn’t right.
Mr. Campbell: Judge Wilson.
Sen. Baker: Wilson. But I’ve known Gene probably as long as anybody except his family. And we’ve done a lot of things together, and we got along well, and understood each other, and respected our respective positions, and to this day I think he’s one of the great men of our time.
Mr. Campbell: Did he ever campaign against you when he was –
Sen. Baker: I don’t think he did. I don’t know whether he did or not. If he did, I was not aware of it. I assumed he didn’t, but I certainly admired him.
Mr. Campbell: Tell us about your memories of Mayor Bissell.
Sen. Baker: Well I knew Bissell. I knew Mayor Bissell I suppose before he was mayor, and dealt with him extensively, and I always thought he was the arch typical mayor. He looked like a mayor, he sounded like a mayor, he acted like a mayor, and he was effective. He really was. I never doubted his commitment to Oak Ridge. Also never doubted his representations to me, and I treasure that relationship and that recollection. Al Bissell was – he was a great mayor, but more than that he was a great spokesman for Oak Ridge and its development. And I used to call on him regularly. He used to call on me freely when I was at Congress, and we found that mutually beneficial.
Mr. Campbell: When you got elected to the Senate, you were an environmentalist.
Sen. Baker: That’s right.
Mr. Campbell: And you and Dr. Weinberg developed a relationship –
Sen. Baker: That’s right.
Mr. Campbell: – on a whole number of fronts.
Sen. Baker: That’s what – which I treasure.
Mr. Campbell: Talk about how Oak Ridge and the science community there interacted with you during your Senate years. Especially the early years.
Sen. Baker: Okay. Let me go back and start with my first contacts or relationship with Alvin Weinberg. I don’t remember exactly who contacted whom, but my recollection is that he contacted me. I was a young senator, barely in the Senate, and I believe we got together in some meeting in Gatlinburg. Anyway he sort of took me under his wing, and that continued. I had an enormous respect for him initially, and still do. I treasure that relationship and continue to have high confidence in his judgment. This is ahead of the project I guess, but I recall once that Alvin Weinberg and I were having a philosophical conversation, and I mused out loud, “Doctor, what would be the greatest gift that science can give to mankind?” Thinking perhaps he’s going to designate nuclear electricity, or power, or fusion development, or the like. To my intense surprise, he said, “A cheap effective way to cut rock.” I looked at him sort of strangely and he said, “We cut rock the same way we cut rock 2,000 years ago, and if we can find an effective way to cut rock, it would open up all sorts of opportunities.” I must say, I sort of thought he was pulling my leg, and I discontinued the conversation, but since then I’ve come to realize that he not only was talking about – I believe, was not only talking about efficiency of construction, but he was also talking about perhaps tapping the one non-atomic power source available, and that’s to drill effectively into the mantle of the Earth, where heat was available abundantly and without practical limitation. I don’t know that’s what he was thinking about, but I believe that’s what he was thinking about. But I found it very interesting and I was delighted to share that with you, because I don’t think it’s recorded any place, I don’t think anybody has thought about it, but I think it’s an important, maybe even historic preview of what could happen in the future. Alvin, though, was a great man in many ways. He was a great scientist. I called on him regularly for advice and insight, but he was also a good tennis player. I used to play tennis, and he and I played a time or two, but the first time – I believe the first time we ever arranged a tennis match was here in Huntsville. I have a tennis court which my family has had for years, and I asked my staff to try to set up a meeting so we could play tennis. And don’t remember who my emissary was, but somebody on my staff came into my office perplexed, and said, “Well, Dr. Weinberg’s secretary,” and I’ve forgotten her name now, Ruth I think, “wants to know,” and then a long list of things, like, “How’s your net game? Is your game principally a base line game? Are you better at rallying or lobbing or what is your – what is the principal strength of your game?” And I started to say, “Well, you know, I’ve opened up a box I shouldn’t open up.” I hadn’t planned to be that serious. But we set up a time and he came up here. I remember Ruth came with him, if that’s his secretary’s name, and sat there almost as if she were a line judge, and we played. I think we played doubles. I don’t remember who else was there. And I came to realize that the efficiency of his preparation appeared to be better than the quality of his game. Indeed he was adequate, but no more, and so was I, so we got along fine in tennis as we did in everything else.
Mr. Campbell: I came across something last night that we didn’t include in the notes, but in 1969-70, you and Edmund Muskie wrote a bill to create the first national environmental laboratory.
Sen. Baker: Correct.
Mr. Campbell: And that bill got torpedoed, apparently, by the old AEC folks –
Sen. Baker: And by everybody in sight. Nobody would���ve done it.
Mr. Campbell: You were obviously ahead of your time.
Sen. Baker: Well I hope so. I had two or three things; those are obvious in mind I think. One was I thought the reservoir of talent, and skill, and insights at the National Labs, principally Oak Ridge in my case, were uniquely qualified to meet this challenge of environmental protection and improvement. That was one reason. The other reason, of course, was that I want to see if it’s going to happen in Oak Ridge. And I regret that it did not, but that reminds me if I may of a story that’s probably not true, maybe true, I hope it’s true, about the creation of Oak Ridge. Do you know about that? About – the story is that President Roosevelt sent for Senator K. D. [Kenneth] McKellar, who was Chairman of the Appropriation Committee in the Senate, and McKellar met him in the Oval Office of course, and President Roosevelt explained that he had to hide in effect a billion dollars to build a super secret defense plan, and Kenneth, you are Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, can you do that? And according to tradition McKellar looks at the President and says, “Well of course I can, Mr. President. And where in Tennessee are we going to locate this facility?” I don’t know that it’s true, but I hope it’s true. And I think it may be true in some variation or the other.
Mr. Smith: It has to be. I tell it every time I give a tour.
Sen. Baker: Well, you know, that’s good because we tell it often enough it’ll be true.
Mr. Smith: Yes sir, that’s exactly right.
Sen. Baker: Sort of like my desk, which I think – all right, well go ahead, that’s another subject.
Mr. Campbell: Thom Mason, who’s the director of the Oak Ridge National Lab now, asked me to ask this question. He’s involved in big science and he’s built the Spallation Neutron Source and understands the challenges of the federal system of getting the big science projects going. Obviously, the biggest one was the Clinch River Breeder Reactor and he wanted to hear you tell that story from your perspective.
Sen. Baker: Okay. Well, to begin with, we spoke of Alvin Weinberg a little while ago, and Alvin was a great champion of the Clinch River Breeder. It wasn’t the Clinch River Breeder then, it was the Sodium Reactor, fast neutron reactor, and he convinced me, but he – Alvin could convince me of almost anything. And I became an early supporter of that project. I think it was right. I think he was right. I think it was a dreadful mistake when we abandoned it, and I observed from time to time, correctly I think, that other countries are going for it regularly, Japan in particular. France, of course, never paused; they kept right on going. And Russia, and others I’m sure. But the breeder does have a future in my view. And I would predict that one of these days we will resume a breeder program in the United States. The problem as I understand it is not technical, it’s not even environmental, it’s more political than anything else. But it really boils down to whether or not we’re willing to face up to the fact that if we’re going to have nuclear power for the generation of electricity, sooner or later you’re going to have to have either plutonium fuel, or mixed oxide fuel, and you can’t do that effectively if you don’t have a breeder program. You can, but that’s the most effective way. So without getting too far into that, I think sooner or later we’ll have some version of a breeder program in the United States. I hope it’ll still be in Oak Ridge. I hope it’ll still remember the Clinch River Project. I know others in the Senate who were there when I was there certainly remember it. I remember a Senator, a Republican Senator who was interviewed by the New York Times, and [they] said, “Baker’s retiring. He’s a Republican leader. What does that mean to you?” My friend said, “It means I’ll never ever again have to vote for the Clinch River Breeder.” And I thought, that is not what I expected, but that has some bearing. But it’s a sound project; it has its problems, but I predict sooner or later we will resume to another examination of a mixed oxides, or plutonium fuel cycle. Otherwise I don’t think you’ll ever have a successful large-scale nuclear power system.
Dr. Fitzgerald: Tom Hill, another friend of yours –
Sen. Baker: He certainly is.
Dr. Fitzgerald: – has been quoted as saying that anytime you needed something, you would go to Senator Baker.
Sen. Baker: Well, it certainly seemed like it.
Dr. Fitzgerald: And he mentioned several things that we wanted to ask you about. One of which was a hearing you convened in Oak Ridge, I believe in around 1975, that involved increasing taxes for Anderson and Roane counties.
Sen. Baker: Right.
Dr. Fitzgerald: Which was certainly one of Oak Ridge’s challenges over the years in terms of a federal installation.
Sen. Baker: That’s a continuing issue I guess, but it certainly was an early issue that is this enormous federal project, enormous federal facility that takes up so much land and is such a large part of the total resources and facilities of the county – the two counties. The federal government, correctly I think, decided to have a program to compensate the local facilities for the loss of taxes. And that continued to be an issue in virtually every session of the Congress. It’s a sound program, it’s fair, unless you privatize the whole thing, which I don’t think is practical right now; this is the only alternative that occurs to me. We’re doing justice to the local facilities – local community, which must support it. All right?
Dr. Fitzgerald: Another one of the issues that he mentioned was the Work For Others Program that was allowing the facilities to do work for other agencies, that became a fairly large and significant program that still exists today.
Sen. Baker: It is indeed, and I think correctly so. Maybe even inevitably so, because when you have that much talent, that many resources, and that much ability, and they’re federally owned and operated, it seems a waste not to utilize those resources for other federal programs, and that goes back to the earliest days when I and Senator Muskie tried to create a system of environmental labs. Oak Ridge would’ve been the premier lab, others would’ve been involved, but that was cornered on the idea that facilities of this caliber ought to be available for other specialized purposes, such as the emerging view environmental challenges.
Dr. Fitzgerald: The other area that became significant for Oak Ridge was the establishment of the Office of Personal Management – your Executive Seminar Center – and it’s my understanding that you had a large role in that – that helped train public managers throughout the country.
Sen. Baker: That is so, and I think it was a good thing to do, and I’m delighted that Oak Ridge was chosen to be the principal location. That, by the way, probably has some bearing on the later evolution and development of the Baker Center at the University of Tennessee, which also is committed to this, as we say, the study of public governance. That continues to be a major challenge in this country, and the major operation – I meant a major opportunity for the Baker Center. I might say parenthetically that people assume that democracy is as old as civilization and that we have adopted a time honored tradition. The truth of the matter is democracy as we know it in America is a fairly new operation. It’s a fairly new concept. It is a hybrid of a republic, a democracy, of a representative democracy, of direct democracy, and we haven’t yet run the string out on that. We still don’t know exactly where we’re going to end up, if ever, with a final solution, but the truth of the matter is, the study of public governance, and the past, and for the future I think is vital as the study of all our presidents are essential if we’re to chart our course for the future. So that’s one of the major additions of the Baker Center, and it does go back to that effort for Oak Ridge.
Mr. Campbell: The whole Birth of a City project, as I envision it, is how you created a city – a town and people out of really nothing, and write a new kind of charter and it was an experiment in government.
Sen. Baker: And it still is.
Mr. Campbell: It still is. It’s a fascinating story to tell, and I think that’s why I’ve enjoyed working with your Dad’s papers and being part of Oak Ridge for the last thirty years.
Sen. Baker: That’s good. What else?
Dr. Fitzgerald: Well, the other interesting chapter, I think, in Oak Ridge’s history that I’ve heard a lot about was when the Japanese were storing a kind of uranium and that you had played a role in helping resolve that issue back in the ’60s.
Sen. Baker: Well. I really can’t tell you much about that. I know it was a current issue and it was important, but I have no vivid recollections of how that finally resolved. I do have vivid recollections of the Japanese attitude toward Oak Ridge.
Mr. Campbell: I'd like to hear those.
Sen. Baker: Well – I’d like to tell you about that. I have a bell in there, that’s a replica of the Peace Bell in Oak Ridge, and I was tempted to take it to Japan with me when I became Ambassador, and then lost my nerve and didn’t do it. But shortly after I arrived in Japan I thought, well you know I got to – I got to – as an American Ambassador I think I owe an obligation to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I didn’t look forward to it, didn’t want to do it particularly, but I did it. And I was astonished. People there were the most tolerant and understanding people you can imagine, even as they stood in the background, and stood before the background of their decimated cities. And I’ve always been struck by that, and struck by the fact that after that event, after the destruction of those two cities, after the fire bombing in Tokyo, which by the way killed more people than both atom bombs combined, that the Japanese I think instinctively are still friends of the United States. And they are perhaps our best ally in the Pacific, maybe our best ally anywhere. It’s remarkable, and to digress for a moment, it’s remarkable as well that, in my view, General MacArthur’s greatness will be recorded in the future not just for what he did in the Pacific, but for how he administered the peace in Japan, because it clearly could’ve gone the other way. But it didn’t and Japan to this day is, I think, closer to the United States politically than I ever would’ve imagined, and that’s passing strange given the fact that we’re an ocean apart, we just got through killing each other, we have a vastly different system of language, of culture, but we have become so close that it’s remarkable. And that was an outgrowth of the thoughts that occurred to me as I visited Nagasaki. What next?
Mr. Campbell: Guilford Glazer.
Sen. Baker: All right, Guilford’s still living. He’s in California. Have you interviewed him?
Mr. Campbell: He’s on our list.
Sen. Baker: Oh, you ought to, you should.
Mr. Campbell: I want to head out to Los Angeles and do that. Guilford is clearly one of the more colorful people in Oak Ridge and kind of, almost becoming a caricature now. But he related his first shopping center was in Oak Ridge. He worked with your father in getting that done. And then you had a long relationship with him. Tell us Guilford Glazer’s story.
Sen. Baker: Well Guilford is a unique person. He is the arch typical developer, enterpriser. He has a keen recognition of his origins. That is of Oak Ridge and East Tennessee. He is a stubborn man who has great insights, and he’s an important part of the history of the development of Oak Ridge, not only because of that shopping center, but because of his view of the future of the community, not an atomic facility, but as a community. And I would encourage you to talk to him about it. He and my dad were contemporaries, but almost a generation apart, because my father’s first friendship was with Guilford’s father, who was – I believe he and maybe his brother were the founders of Guilford’s – of Glazer Steel in Knoxville, but as an outgrowth of that, my dad and Guilford became very close, and I inherited that relationship and I’m pleased I did. I haven’t seen Guilford in a few years, but I used to see him fairly often in L.A. and he’s still very much an East Tennessean, still very much an Oak Ridger, even though he is a prominent figure and I guess made his major improvement in his resources in California. I think he still thinks of Oak Ridge in a very favorable way.
Mr. Campbell: I’ll give you a ‘for instance’: my office, which is the University of Tennessee building in Oak Ridge is the Glazer Building, the Guilford and Diane Glazer Building.
Sen. Baker: There’s even a controversy that rages about that, but I’m not going to go into that.
All: [laughter]
Mr. Campbell: You had a front seat row for the Reagan years on the end of the Cold War. Can you reflect on your perception of Oak Ridge’s role on the end of the Cold War?
Sen. Baker: Well, I will. Ronald Reagan in my view is a great President. Not because he was a great communicator, which he was, or because he was a conservative spokesman for a significant part of the American electorate, but in my view because he understood what being President was all about. He understood that being President was not like anything else on Earth and that he had the sole authority and responsibility of charting the course of this country economically and foreign policy as well. I don’t think he was a bit afraid of that. We’ve had Presidents who were in my opinion intimidated by the grandeur of that office, but he wasn’t. I think he was not afraid to tackle the great foreign policy issues. I watched him up close, especially with Russia, and saw him not only hold his own, but to make his points and to smash the rest of us out to make similar points. Oak Ridge was then and is now a premiere facility that’s associated with the military body of the United States. He never flouted that. I don’t recall ever hearing him threaten anybody with Oak Ridge, but it was clear that he acknowledged that in his own mind, and depended on that for the force of his position. I also remember that when he came to Knoxville in 1982, at my urging, to open the World’s Fair, that he asked me before he accepted how close it was to Oak Ridge. And I toyed with the idea of taking him to Oak Ridge after or before the opening of the World’s Fair, but I thought, and others agreed, that it would detract from the importance of what he was there for, and we didn’t. But Ronald Reagan understood the might and power of atomic energy, and the might and grandeur of American power, but he never flouted it, he never tried to use that as an intimidating position, but he understood that behind the developments there, and at Los Alamos and other facilities, he had a great resource that enabled him to advance his foreign policy initiative successfully, and he did that.
Mr. Campbell: Some day when all that’s unclassified I’m going to go write another book about that.
Sen. Baker: All right. Do that. Do that. That’s a good thing to do. As you can probably tell there’s other things that I’m not going to say right now about it.
Dr. Fitzgerald: We talked a little bit about the relationship between the Baker Center and Oak Ridge and in your vision, what would you say lessons are that students could learn, who are interested in public policy, about Oak Ridge, that special relationship?
Sen. Baker: Well, I don’t know exactly, but my hope is that the Baker Center would fully utilize the resources or the precedent of the development of Oak Ridge as an example of how public policy and public governance could be advanced. I do not think most people acknowledge the fact that public governance, as we know it in America is an ongoing experiment, but it is. And I think Oak Ridge is a perfect example of that. It came from fields and valleys in East Tennessee, virtually undeveloped, to become a huge city, huge in relative terms, an important city, a vital city, and it did that successfully, not withstanding there was no clear guidepost for how you do it. I remember vividly my father, who was district attorney for that district, including Oak Ridge – that he used to complain – not complain, but at least to observe, that this huge city of fifty or sixty thousand people had grown up. Nobody really understood what they were about, but they did understand that it was a vital project, and that it was fully engaged in important work and secure work, and that nobody knew exactly how to take care of it, with police facilities, with fire facilities, with sanitary facilities, and the like. And Oak Ridge to me represents the genius of the American people for cooperation with local authorities, for taking the existing situation that was virtually unprecedented, and making it work by combining the resources that were available, by creating new facilities such as home ownership, and local governance, that had to go if it was to be a primary advance, and that all these are an exercise in the future development of public governance. That, I hope, the Baker Center can elaborate and extend, and if they do I think it'll be very useful.
Mr. Campbell: You got a chance to look at the non-proliferation issue from both sides. It’s been one of those issues that Oak Ridge is right now similarly involved with is this new global paradigm that's being created. Give us a sense of proliferation over the years and how you worked with that.
Sen. Baker: Non-proliferation is more a hope than a reality. Once again, the proliferation of destructive weapon systems will depend in large measure on how effective or successful our self government is, because in my view, without being, I hope, unduly philosophical, the United States is uniquely qualified to address these issues. We have a unique ability to hear what people think, and to translate that into useful public policy. That’s called politics with America, and it is only by that that we find the best ideas, the best insights, and the best suggestions for the future. It doesn’t make any difference how smart a philosopher is or a public servant is; the chances are pretty good that he’s not entirely right. That he or she must keep themselves in the position to hear what other people have to say, and that is the essence of public governance. Not offering knowledge, but absolutely essential. There you got to entertain the thought that, at least the possibility, you’re not always right, and hear what the other person has to say. I remember vividly my dad told me, long before I was involved in politics, but he was involved in politics, that the essence of politics in America was a decent respect for the other person’s point of view, and that stayed with me forever. I believe that and I believe that embodies the idea I’ve just suggested. That is that you’ve got to hear what the public thinks, you’ve got to put faith in the sensing system that is the American political system, but at the same time understand that we’re not done with this experiment, that we’re going for it.
Mr. Campbell: You came to office in a unique time in American history, 1966, ’67?
Sen. Baker: Well yeah, I went there in sixty – I was elected in ’66.
Mr. Campbell: And I was watching Woodstock with my daughter –
Sen. Baker: You were?
Mr. Campbell: And thinking about all the – and they don’t believe that actually happened when I was alive.
ALL: [laughter]
Sen. Baker: That’s interesting in and of itself.
Mr. Campbell: But the way, the issues that you tackled from day one, when you were in the Senate, were the same issues that are important to us today – the energy, the environment, security, public policy, in a consistent way. It’s been interesting to see your career, reading about it again this week.
Sen. Baker: Well you know the most interesting thing to me is that I survived it. And some say, “Well, why’d you quit?” and I said, “I didn’t quit. I decided early on that I didn’t want to make this my life career, that politics or public governance should be a sometimes job for conscientious public servants to serve and then to return to private life. I hope I’ve done that; I think I’ve done that. But I think that’s my greatest achievement perhaps. I’m happy – I really am so grateful for the opportunity to represent Tennessee in the Senate, and as you know, I was the first Republican ever to do so. I’m happy beyond words to have survived Watergate; by the way, I never planned to do that, and some thought I was appointed Senior Republican as spite by Hugh Scott, who I ran against for leader, not true. But I’m happy to have survived that. I’m happy to have been involved in many, many important issues such as energy, the environment, especially the environment. Ed Muskie was a ferocious liberal Democrat, and he and I used to be in hearings in the Public Works Committee, and we would have difficulties, or at the Executive Session, with our points of view and end up in effect screaming at each other. And our staffs would cringe, but it always turned out to be a productive enterprise, and we were able usually, almost always, to come together on a common of point of view, a bipartisan point of view. So I was lucky to have that opportunity. And then I was lucky to have the opportunity to be leader, Republican leader, and luckier still to retire under my own power, which not everybody does, and to return to private life. And by the way, I never planned, never thought I would ever be any President’s Chief of Staff, and it was totally surprising to me when President Reagan asked me to do it. That’s another story for another time, but I had no idea that he had that in mind till he called. And I was in Florida on a vacation with my family, and he didn’t – my late wife Joy took the phone call, and according to her it went like this. “Joy, where is Howard?” “Mr. President, Howard’s at the zoo with my two grandsons.” And he let – according to her, chuckled and said, “Wait until he sees the zoo I have in mind for him.” Anyway he asked me to come to Washington the next day, and I assumed he wanted me to do something since that was not the high point of the Reagan Presidency. And I marshaled all my arguments for why I couldn’t do whatever it was they wanted me to do. I'd been eighteen years in the Senate, I'd been Republican leader, I had retired under my own power, returned to private life, and was happy. We got to D.C. and were met by a White House car, and taken to the Oval Office, not the Oval Office, to the living quarters, on the second – on the third floor. A little elevator opened and there stood Ronald Reagan. Most people don’t think this is true, but it is the truth. Elevator door opened and there stood Ronald Reagan, who said, “Howard, I have to hire a new Chief of Staff, and I want you to do it.” And I sort of heard myself say, “All right,” and that was the end of my good resolve, but I’m glad I did. I’m really fortunate to have had that opportunity, see the executive’s department up close, to see Ronald Reagan up close under a stressful situation, and lucky as well to have gotten out with my own power. And then I was lucky, of course, to – in a similar way, to not expect to be Ambassador to Japan, and I was determined to turn it down, but I didn’t, and I’m glad I went. My wife Nancy and I are glad we went, and it was a great opportunity. And by the way, I want to tell you, I came away convinced that whatever grandeur and glory MacArthur gets for the war of the Pacific, it is no greater than his organizing and administering the administration of that country after the war. People still to this day in Japan virtually idolize MacArthur, and still to this day, the American Ambassador in Japan is somebody different, and set apart. And that’s remarkable. It’s unexpected and it’s remarkable. By the way, when you present your credentials to the Emperor, the palace sends an eighteenth century coach, gold – gilded coach with uniformed and liveried attendants and horses, and they take you to this palace – and in your cutaway and striped trousers – and you present your credentials. I have a picture of it over there; I’ll show you in a minute. But I was halfway there and I thought, you know, maybe this is the way it ought to be. Maybe this is the way public service ought to be – but that’s not true – but anyway, it was a great, great experience in Japan, and I’m glad I did it. And I continue to believe that MacArthur was great for many reasons, but principally because he successfully administered a difficult country and set it on the right course.
Mr. Campbell: I have one last question. You’ve mentored a great many of the new political leaders in Tennessee. Many that I’m working with in my role today. What kind of guidance would you leave with them on how they should act in the future?
Sen. Baker: I wouldn’t presume to do that. What I do is try to be their friend, share my insights as they ask for it, not to volunteer it unduly, but most of all to say to them what I fundamentally believe, understand you’ll have deep convictions and deep commitments to certain points of view, but it’s the nature of the system that you’ve got to also understand that there must be some room to believe you may not always be right, and you better listen to what the other people have to say before you make a judgment.
Dr. Fitzgerald: One last quick question.
Sen. Baker: There’s always one more.
Dr. Fitzgerald: I was very interested in what you said about where you were when you found out what was going on in Oak Ridge. And which you look at, I think all of us, and certainly in your lifetime, you’ve seen Oak Ridge’s role and how Oak Ridge as a community has evolved, and we currently have the first Oak Ridge mayor in history that has not worked at one of the facilities.
Sen. Baker: I guess that’s right.
Dr. Fitzgerald: And what would you say, what could Oak Ridge do, what would be our role in the future for East Tennessee from your perspective as you’ve seen everything that Oak Ridge has done over the years? What could we do to help continue to improve East Tennessee?
Sen. Baker: Well I think you’re doing it now. I think Oak Ridge has so much to contribute. Not only from a technological standpoint, a great research facility, but the very fact that it exists today is an object lesson in how the system can work, and perhaps the greatest contribution Oak Ridge can make. That is to say that this community grew up out of corn fields, and the super secrecy, but it survived and prospered, and supported its purpose and its facilities, and transitioned then into an essential part of the community, with its own government, with private enterprise, with private development, and you had many entrepreneurs involved in that, and with a great future. That’s what I think.
Mr. Smith: One last response.
Sen. Baker: There’s always one more.
Mr. Smith: We’ve asked a lot of questions. Been very probing in some of them. But we may not have hit on some of the things that in your mind you would like to share about Oak Ridge. So, if there’s any last thoughts that we haven’t gotten to in our questions, feel free to give us any thoughts you have.
Sen. Baker: Well my grandson’s there now. He is an intern in the computer center, having completed or about to complete his master’s degree in engineering, and I’m happy to say he came up this weekend on his birthday. I sometimes think he did it because Huntsville’s closer than Nashville, but in any event he came up, and it’s clear to me that he really enjoyed Oak Ridge as a community, and I’m delighted. Not only because of his proximity to me but because I think it shows good judgment on his part. There. That’ll do.
[end of recording]

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ORAL HISTORY OF HOWARD BAKER, JR.
Interviewed by Jim Campbell, Amy Fitzgerald, Ph.D., and D. Ray Smith
Filmed by Matt Mullins
August 19, 2009
Mr. Mullins: Please state your name and where you live so we can get a final audio check.
Sen. Baker: We’ll do that. My name is Howard Baker. Howard H. Baker Jr. I live in Huntsville, Scott County, Tennessee, which, by the way, is the center of the universe.
Mr. Campbell: I’m pretty well convinced of that after our travels.
Mr. Mullins: If we can do one last cell phone check to make sure cell phones are off please.
Sen. Baker: I gave you mine, Fred. You’ve got to turn it off.
Mr. Campbell: I’ve got to figure out how to turn mine off.
Sen. Baker: I know it. That’s why I gave it to Fred.
Mr. Campbell: We’re kind of going to do this chronologically, starting back with your earliest memories of Oak Ridge and moving forward.
Sen. Baker: Okay.
Mr. Campbell: We���re doing this, and I want to set the stage a little bit, as part of a Preserve America grant. And we’re trying to collect the stories of Oak Ridge, on video, from as many people that grew up there and were part of its formation, as we possibly can. You’re one of the first people we’ve done this with, so you’re our experiment.
Sen. Baker: All right. I’m willing to be an experiment. It’s true, I grew up when Oak Ridge was not Oak Ridge. Indeed, my dad was district attorney of the 19th – then the 19th Judicial District, which included Anderson County. And I remember vividly him coming home at night, saying, “I don’t know what they’re doing over there, but there’s so many of them,” and says, “I have responsibility for prosecuting criminal cases in that area, and I have one assistant, and as far as I can figure there are fifteen thousand people,” later many more than that, “and I fear they all get drunk on Saturday night, and that’s all I know about the place.” But of course as time went on it was clear there was a major installation. And it was – by the time it was opened, I guess it was sixty thousand or thereabouts, fifty or sixty thousand, but it was one of the major construction projects in the country if not the principal construction project in World War II, and I made a speech once in Oak Ridge, long after it was created, in which I referred to it as Black Oak Ridge, which indeed it was. That was the original name. And, of course, it was an unincorporated municipality for many years. And the state and local facilities had the responsibility for governance and protection, except for the military protection. And that was what my father complained about initially was he was overloaded, understaffed, which continued, but I remember that – I don’t remember the year, but when Oak Ridge was in the height of its construction period, that my dad took me over there once to see it, and I recall vividly that we had to have someone in the compound call the gate, and vouch for us. And we had to sit there in the car until that was done, and then we had an escort through the gate in the facility. Of course there’s nothing there except construction mostly, but even then I did not know what they were doing. He didn’t either, and we all knew it was an important thing and huge, but we didn’t know what or where it was going. I remember one night at dinner my dad was talking about what they were doing, he said, “I don’t know what they’re doing, but I suppose I’m not supposed to know what they’re doing, but I observe that there are freight carloads of stuff that come in every day, and as far as I can tell, nothing goes out. So whatever it is is unique.” And indeed that was so. So it was very much a construction project when I first visited, and it changed dramatically as time went on. Also at that time, it was not a city. It was simply a part of Anderson County and Roane County, and did not have city facilities except informally, but that grew and grew to the place where finally by act of Congress, which my dad was involved with, they were authorized to have a city government, and ultimately to sell property. I remember that was one of the big issues in my dad’s early political campaigns was authorizing the sale of housing in Oak Ridge to private individuals.
Mr. Campbell: Atomic Communities Act of 1954.
Sen. Baker: I’m sure that’s right. I’m sure that’s right. Well I think it was a great success, but I think some of those buildings are maybe still there, but anyway it was a dramatic change. I don’t know where to go from there, except to say that a little later in my life when I, like all my contemporaries just about, was in the military. I was in the Navy right after high school, as almost everyone was. And I was offered the opportunity to be in one of the programs in the – and a choice between a Navy program, an Air Force program, or an Army program. I don’t know to this day why I picked the Navy, but I did. And was in the Navy V-12 program, and at the time Oak Ridge was acknowledged and it was known worldwide for what it was doing, I was at Melville, Rhode Island at a P.T. Boat training school. I remember vividly the announcement that we had dropped the atom bomb, and I remember as well hearing on the radio that is was done largely, that it was prepared largely at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Which really was the first concrete information that I had about what in the world they were doing, and I also remember that I believe without exception my classmates in that training school cheered wildly, because – not because of the technological advance, but because that meant we were not going to have to go to the Pacific, and indeed that was what happened. But anyway, my affiliation, or my knowledge, or association with Oak Ridge continued from that point on, and when I got out the Navy, I went to law school at the University of Tennessee.
Mr. Campbell: And you met a character named Gene Joyce.
Sen. Baker: I did. I did indeed, and Gene was a good friend, and I admired him greatly, and he was a rabid democrat as was his law partner Judge Joyce. No, that wasn’t right.
Mr. Campbell: Judge Wilson.
Sen. Baker: Wilson. But I’ve known Gene probably as long as anybody except his family. And we’ve done a lot of things together, and we got along well, and understood each other, and respected our respective positions, and to this day I think he’s one of the great men of our time.
Mr. Campbell: Did he ever campaign against you when he was –
Sen. Baker: I don’t think he did. I don’t know whether he did or not. If he did, I was not aware of it. I assumed he didn’t, but I certainly admired him.
Mr. Campbell: Tell us about your memories of Mayor Bissell.
Sen. Baker: Well I knew Bissell. I knew Mayor Bissell I suppose before he was mayor, and dealt with him extensively, and I always thought he was the arch typical mayor. He looked like a mayor, he sounded like a mayor, he acted like a mayor, and he was effective. He really was. I never doubted his commitment to Oak Ridge. Also never doubted his representations to me, and I treasure that relationship and that recollection. Al Bissell was – he was a great mayor, but more than that he was a great spokesman for Oak Ridge and its development. And I used to call on him regularly. He used to call on me freely when I was at Congress, and we found that mutually beneficial.
Mr. Campbell: When you got elected to the Senate, you were an environmentalist.
Sen. Baker: That’s right.
Mr. Campbell: And you and Dr. Weinberg developed a relationship –
Sen. Baker: That’s right.
Mr. Campbell: – on a whole number of fronts.
Sen. Baker: That’s what – which I treasure.
Mr. Campbell: Talk about how Oak Ridge and the science community there interacted with you during your Senate years. Especially the early years.
Sen. Baker: Okay. Let me go back and start with my first contacts or relationship with Alvin Weinberg. I don’t remember exactly who contacted whom, but my recollection is that he contacted me. I was a young senator, barely in the Senate, and I believe we got together in some meeting in Gatlinburg. Anyway he sort of took me under his wing, and that continued. I had an enormous respect for him initially, and still do. I treasure that relationship and continue to have high confidence in his judgment. This is ahead of the project I guess, but I recall once that Alvin Weinberg and I were having a philosophical conversation, and I mused out loud, “Doctor, what would be the greatest gift that science can give to mankind?” Thinking perhaps he’s going to designate nuclear electricity, or power, or fusion development, or the like. To my intense surprise, he said, “A cheap effective way to cut rock.” I looked at him sort of strangely and he said, “We cut rock the same way we cut rock 2,000 years ago, and if we can find an effective way to cut rock, it would open up all sorts of opportunities.” I must say, I sort of thought he was pulling my leg, and I discontinued the conversation, but since then I’ve come to realize that he not only was talking about – I believe, was not only talking about efficiency of construction, but he was also talking about perhaps tapping the one non-atomic power source available, and that’s to drill effectively into the mantle of the Earth, where heat was available abundantly and without practical limitation. I don’t know that’s what he was thinking about, but I believe that’s what he was thinking about. But I found it very interesting and I was delighted to share that with you, because I don’t think it’s recorded any place, I don’t think anybody has thought about it, but I think it’s an important, maybe even historic preview of what could happen in the future. Alvin, though, was a great man in many ways. He was a great scientist. I called on him regularly for advice and insight, but he was also a good tennis player. I used to play tennis, and he and I played a time or two, but the first time – I believe the first time we ever arranged a tennis match was here in Huntsville. I have a tennis court which my family has had for years, and I asked my staff to try to set up a meeting so we could play tennis. And don’t remember who my emissary was, but somebody on my staff came into my office perplexed, and said, “Well, Dr. Weinberg’s secretary,” and I’ve forgotten her name now, Ruth I think, “wants to know,” and then a long list of things, like, “How’s your net game? Is your game principally a base line game? Are you better at rallying or lobbing or what is your – what is the principal strength of your game?” And I started to say, “Well, you know, I’ve opened up a box I shouldn’t open up.” I hadn’t planned to be that serious. But we set up a time and he came up here. I remember Ruth came with him, if that’s his secretary’s name, and sat there almost as if she were a line judge, and we played. I think we played doubles. I don’t remember who else was there. And I came to realize that the efficiency of his preparation appeared to be better than the quality of his game. Indeed he was adequate, but no more, and so was I, so we got along fine in tennis as we did in everything else.
Mr. Campbell: I came across something last night that we didn’t include in the notes, but in 1969-70, you and Edmund Muskie wrote a bill to create the first national environmental laboratory.
Sen. Baker: Correct.
Mr. Campbell: And that bill got torpedoed, apparently, by the old AEC folks –
Sen. Baker: And by everybody in sight. Nobody would���ve done it.
Mr. Campbell: You were obviously ahead of your time.
Sen. Baker: Well I hope so. I had two or three things; those are obvious in mind I think. One was I thought the reservoir of talent, and skill, and insights at the National Labs, principally Oak Ridge in my case, were uniquely qualified to meet this challenge of environmental protection and improvement. That was one reason. The other reason, of course, was that I want to see if it’s going to happen in Oak Ridge. And I regret that it did not, but that reminds me if I may of a story that’s probably not true, maybe true, I hope it’s true, about the creation of Oak Ridge. Do you know about that? About – the story is that President Roosevelt sent for Senator K. D. [Kenneth] McKellar, who was Chairman of the Appropriation Committee in the Senate, and McKellar met him in the Oval Office of course, and President Roosevelt explained that he had to hide in effect a billion dollars to build a super secret defense plan, and Kenneth, you are Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, can you do that? And according to tradition McKellar looks at the President and says, “Well of course I can, Mr. President. And where in Tennessee are we going to locate this facility?” I don’t know that it’s true, but I hope it’s true. And I think it may be true in some variation or the other.
Mr. Smith: It has to be. I tell it every time I give a tour.
Sen. Baker: Well, you know, that’s good because we tell it often enough it’ll be true.
Mr. Smith: Yes sir, that’s exactly right.
Sen. Baker: Sort of like my desk, which I think – all right, well go ahead, that’s another subject.
Mr. Campbell: Thom Mason, who’s the director of the Oak Ridge National Lab now, asked me to ask this question. He’s involved in big science and he’s built the Spallation Neutron Source and understands the challenges of the federal system of getting the big science projects going. Obviously, the biggest one was the Clinch River Breeder Reactor and he wanted to hear you tell that story from your perspective.
Sen. Baker: Okay. Well, to begin with, we spoke of Alvin Weinberg a little while ago, and Alvin was a great champion of the Clinch River Breeder. It wasn’t the Clinch River Breeder then, it was the Sodium Reactor, fast neutron reactor, and he convinced me, but he – Alvin could convince me of almost anything. And I became an early supporter of that project. I think it was right. I think he was right. I think it was a dreadful mistake when we abandoned it, and I observed from time to time, correctly I think, that other countries are going for it regularly, Japan in particular. France, of course, never paused; they kept right on going. And Russia, and others I’m sure. But the breeder does have a future in my view. And I would predict that one of these days we will resume a breeder program in the United States. The problem as I understand it is not technical, it’s not even environmental, it’s more political than anything else. But it really boils down to whether or not we’re willing to face up to the fact that if we’re going to have nuclear power for the generation of electricity, sooner or later you’re going to have to have either plutonium fuel, or mixed oxide fuel, and you can’t do that effectively if you don’t have a breeder program. You can, but that’s the most effective way. So without getting too far into that, I think sooner or later we’ll have some version of a breeder program in the United States. I hope it’ll still be in Oak Ridge. I hope it’ll still remember the Clinch River Project. I know others in the Senate who were there when I was there certainly remember it. I remember a Senator, a Republican Senator who was interviewed by the New York Times, and [they] said, “Baker’s retiring. He’s a Republican leader. What does that mean to you?” My friend said, “It means I’ll never ever again have to vote for the Clinch River Breeder.” And I thought, that is not what I expected, but that has some bearing. But it’s a sound project; it has its problems, but I predict sooner or later we will resume to another examination of a mixed oxides, or plutonium fuel cycle. Otherwise I don’t think you’ll ever have a successful large-scale nuclear power system.
Dr. Fitzgerald: Tom Hill, another friend of yours –
Sen. Baker: He certainly is.
Dr. Fitzgerald: – has been quoted as saying that anytime you needed something, you would go to Senator Baker.
Sen. Baker: Well, it certainly seemed like it.
Dr. Fitzgerald: And he mentioned several things that we wanted to ask you about. One of which was a hearing you convened in Oak Ridge, I believe in around 1975, that involved increasing taxes for Anderson and Roane counties.
Sen. Baker: Right.
Dr. Fitzgerald: Which was certainly one of Oak Ridge’s challenges over the years in terms of a federal installation.
Sen. Baker: That’s a continuing issue I guess, but it certainly was an early issue that is this enormous federal project, enormous federal facility that takes up so much land and is such a large part of the total resources and facilities of the county – the two counties. The federal government, correctly I think, decided to have a program to compensate the local facilities for the loss of taxes. And that continued to be an issue in virtually every session of the Congress. It’s a sound program, it’s fair, unless you privatize the whole thing, which I don’t think is practical right now; this is the only alternative that occurs to me. We’re doing justice to the local facilities – local community, which must support it. All right?
Dr. Fitzgerald: Another one of the issues that he mentioned was the Work For Others Program that was allowing the facilities to do work for other agencies, that became a fairly large and significant program that still exists today.
Sen. Baker: It is indeed, and I think correctly so. Maybe even inevitably so, because when you have that much talent, that many resources, and that much ability, and they’re federally owned and operated, it seems a waste not to utilize those resources for other federal programs, and that goes back to the earliest days when I and Senator Muskie tried to create a system of environmental labs. Oak Ridge would’ve been the premier lab, others would’ve been involved, but that was cornered on the idea that facilities of this caliber ought to be available for other specialized purposes, such as the emerging view environmental challenges.
Dr. Fitzgerald: The other area that became significant for Oak Ridge was the establishment of the Office of Personal Management – your Executive Seminar Center – and it’s my understanding that you had a large role in that – that helped train public managers throughout the country.
Sen. Baker: That is so, and I think it was a good thing to do, and I’m delighted that Oak Ridge was chosen to be the principal location. That, by the way, probably has some bearing on the later evolution and development of the Baker Center at the University of Tennessee, which also is committed to this, as we say, the study of public governance. That continues to be a major challenge in this country, and the major operation – I meant a major opportunity for the Baker Center. I might say parenthetically that people assume that democracy is as old as civilization and that we have adopted a time honored tradition. The truth of the matter is democracy as we know it in America is a fairly new operation. It’s a fairly new concept. It is a hybrid of a republic, a democracy, of a representative democracy, of direct democracy, and we haven’t yet run the string out on that. We still don’t know exactly where we’re going to end up, if ever, with a final solution, but the truth of the matter is, the study of public governance, and the past, and for the future I think is vital as the study of all our presidents are essential if we’re to chart our course for the future. So that’s one of the major additions of the Baker Center, and it does go back to that effort for Oak Ridge.
Mr. Campbell: The whole Birth of a City project, as I envision it, is how you created a city – a town and people out of really nothing, and write a new kind of charter and it was an experiment in government.
Sen. Baker: And it still is.
Mr. Campbell: It still is. It’s a fascinating story to tell, and I think that’s why I’ve enjoyed working with your Dad’s papers and being part of Oak Ridge for the last thirty years.
Sen. Baker: That’s good. What else?
Dr. Fitzgerald: Well, the other interesting chapter, I think, in Oak Ridge’s history that I’ve heard a lot about was when the Japanese were storing a kind of uranium and that you had played a role in helping resolve that issue back in the ’60s.
Sen. Baker: Well. I really can’t tell you much about that. I know it was a current issue and it was important, but I have no vivid recollections of how that finally resolved. I do have vivid recollections of the Japanese attitude toward Oak Ridge.
Mr. Campbell: I'd like to hear those.
Sen. Baker: Well – I’d like to tell you about that. I have a bell in there, that’s a replica of the Peace Bell in Oak Ridge, and I was tempted to take it to Japan with me when I became Ambassador, and then lost my nerve and didn’t do it. But shortly after I arrived in Japan I thought, well you know I got to – I got to – as an American Ambassador I think I owe an obligation to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I didn’t look forward to it, didn’t want to do it particularly, but I did it. And I was astonished. People there were the most tolerant and understanding people you can imagine, even as they stood in the background, and stood before the background of their decimated cities. And I’ve always been struck by that, and struck by the fact that after that event, after the destruction of those two cities, after the fire bombing in Tokyo, which by the way killed more people than both atom bombs combined, that the Japanese I think instinctively are still friends of the United States. And they are perhaps our best ally in the Pacific, maybe our best ally anywhere. It’s remarkable, and to digress for a moment, it’s remarkable as well that, in my view, General MacArthur’s greatness will be recorded in the future not just for what he did in the Pacific, but for how he administered the peace in Japan, because it clearly could’ve gone the other way. But it didn’t and Japan to this day is, I think, closer to the United States politically than I ever would’ve imagined, and that’s passing strange given the fact that we’re an ocean apart, we just got through killing each other, we have a vastly different system of language, of culture, but we have become so close that it’s remarkable. And that was an outgrowth of the thoughts that occurred to me as I visited Nagasaki. What next?
Mr. Campbell: Guilford Glazer.
Sen. Baker: All right, Guilford’s still living. He’s in California. Have you interviewed him?
Mr. Campbell: He’s on our list.
Sen. Baker: Oh, you ought to, you should.
Mr. Campbell: I want to head out to Los Angeles and do that. Guilford is clearly one of the more colorful people in Oak Ridge and kind of, almost becoming a caricature now. But he related his first shopping center was in Oak Ridge. He worked with your father in getting that done. And then you had a long relationship with him. Tell us Guilford Glazer’s story.
Sen. Baker: Well Guilford is a unique person. He is the arch typical developer, enterpriser. He has a keen recognition of his origins. That is of Oak Ridge and East Tennessee. He is a stubborn man who has great insights, and he’s an important part of the history of the development of Oak Ridge, not only because of that shopping center, but because of his view of the future of the community, not an atomic facility, but as a community. And I would encourage you to talk to him about it. He and my dad were contemporaries, but almost a generation apart, because my father’s first friendship was with Guilford’s father, who was – I believe he and maybe his brother were the founders of Guilford’s – of Glazer Steel in Knoxville, but as an outgrowth of that, my dad and Guilford became very close, and I inherited that relationship and I’m pleased I did. I haven’t seen Guilford in a few years, but I used to see him fairly often in L.A. and he’s still very much an East Tennessean, still very much an Oak Ridger, even though he is a prominent figure and I guess made his major improvement in his resources in California. I think he still thinks of Oak Ridge in a very favorable way.
Mr. Campbell: I’ll give you a ‘for instance’: my office, which is the University of Tennessee building in Oak Ridge is the Glazer Building, the Guilford and Diane Glazer Building.
Sen. Baker: There’s even a controversy that rages about that, but I’m not going to go into that.
All: [laughter]
Mr. Campbell: You had a front seat row for the Reagan years on the end of the Cold War. Can you reflect on your perception of Oak Ridge’s role on the end of the Cold War?
Sen. Baker: Well, I will. Ronald Reagan in my view is a great President. Not because he was a great communicator, which he was, or because he was a conservative spokesman for a significant part of the American electorate, but in my view because he understood what being President was all about. He understood that being President was not like anything else on Earth and that he had the sole authority and responsibility of charting the course of this country economically and foreign policy as well. I don’t think he was a bit afraid of that. We’ve had Presidents who were in my opinion intimidated by the grandeur of that office, but he wasn’t. I think he was not afraid to tackle the great foreign policy issues. I watched him up close, especially with Russia, and saw him not only hold his own, but to make his points and to smash the rest of us out to make similar points. Oak Ridge was then and is now a premiere facility that’s associated with the military body of the United States. He never flouted that. I don’t recall ever hearing him threaten anybody with Oak Ridge, but it was clear that he acknowledged that in his own mind, and depended on that for the force of his position. I also remember that when he came to Knoxville in 1982, at my urging, to open the World’s Fair, that he asked me before he accepted how close it was to Oak Ridge. And I toyed with the idea of taking him to Oak Ridge after or before the opening of the World’s Fair, but I thought, and others agreed, that it would detract from the importance of what he was there for, and we didn’t. But Ronald Reagan understood the might and power of atomic energy, and the might and grandeur of American power, but he never flouted it, he never tried to use that as an intimidating position, but he understood that behind the developments there, and at Los Alamos and other facilities, he had a great resource that enabled him to advance his foreign policy initiative successfully, and he did that.
Mr. Campbell: Some day when all that’s unclassified I’m going to go write another book about that.
Sen. Baker: All right. Do that. Do that. That’s a good thing to do. As you can probably tell there’s other things that I’m not going to say right now about it.
Dr. Fitzgerald: We talked a little bit about the relationship between the Baker Center and Oak Ridge and in your vision, what would you say lessons are that students could learn, who are interested in public policy, about Oak Ridge, that special relationship?
Sen. Baker: Well, I don’t know exactly, but my hope is that the Baker Center would fully utilize the resources or the precedent of the development of Oak Ridge as an example of how public policy and public governance could be advanced. I do not think most people acknowledge the fact that public governance, as we know it in America is an ongoing experiment, but it is. And I think Oak Ridge is a perfect example of that. It came from fields and valleys in East Tennessee, virtually undeveloped, to become a huge city, huge in relative terms, an important city, a vital city, and it did that successfully, not withstanding there was no clear guidepost for how you do it. I remember vividly my father, who was district attorney for that district, including Oak Ridge – that he used to complain – not complain, but at least to observe, that this huge city of fifty or sixty thousand people had grown up. Nobody really understood what they were about, but they did understand that it was a vital project, and that it was fully engaged in important work and secure work, and that nobody knew exactly how to take care of it, with police facilities, with fire facilities, with sanitary facilities, and the like. And Oak Ridge to me represents the genius of the American people for cooperation with local authorities, for taking the existing situation that was virtually unprecedented, and making it work by combining the resources that were available, by creating new facilities such as home ownership, and local governance, that had to go if it was to be a primary advance, and that all these are an exercise in the future development of public governance. That, I hope, the Baker Center can elaborate and extend, and if they do I think it'll be very useful.
Mr. Campbell: You got a chance to look at the non-proliferation issue from both sides. It’s been one of those issues that Oak Ridge is right now similarly involved with is this new global paradigm that's being created. Give us a sense of proliferation over the years and how you worked with that.
Sen. Baker: Non-proliferation is more a hope than a reality. Once again, the proliferation of destructive weapon systems will depend in large measure on how effective or successful our self government is, because in my view, without being, I hope, unduly philosophical, the United States is uniquely qualified to address these issues. We have a unique ability to hear what people think, and to translate that into useful public policy. That’s called politics with America, and it is only by that that we find the best ideas, the best insights, and the best suggestions for the future. It doesn’t make any difference how smart a philosopher is or a public servant is; the chances are pretty good that he’s not entirely right. That he or she must keep themselves in the position to hear what other people have to say, and that is the essence of public governance. Not offering knowledge, but absolutely essential. There you got to entertain the thought that, at least the possibility, you’re not always right, and hear what the other person has to say. I remember vividly my dad told me, long before I was involved in politics, but he was involved in politics, that the essence of politics in America was a decent respect for the other person’s point of view, and that stayed with me forever. I believe that and I believe that embodies the idea I’ve just suggested. That is that you’ve got to hear what the public thinks, you’ve got to put faith in the sensing system that is the American political system, but at the same time understand that we’re not done with this experiment, that we’re going for it.
Mr. Campbell: You came to office in a unique time in American history, 1966, ’67?
Sen. Baker: Well yeah, I went there in sixty – I was elected in ’66.
Mr. Campbell: And I was watching Woodstock with my daughter –
Sen. Baker: You were?
Mr. Campbell: And thinking about all the – and they don’t believe that actually happened when I was alive.
ALL: [laughter]
Sen. Baker: That’s interesting in and of itself.
Mr. Campbell: But the way, the issues that you tackled from day one, when you were in the Senate, were the same issues that are important to us today – the energy, the environment, security, public policy, in a consistent way. It’s been interesting to see your career, reading about it again this week.
Sen. Baker: Well you know the most interesting thing to me is that I survived it. And some say, “Well, why’d you quit?” and I said, “I didn’t quit. I decided early on that I didn’t want to make this my life career, that politics or public governance should be a sometimes job for conscientious public servants to serve and then to return to private life. I hope I’ve done that; I think I’ve done that. But I think that’s my greatest achievement perhaps. I’m happy – I really am so grateful for the opportunity to represent Tennessee in the Senate, and as you know, I was the first Republican ever to do so. I’m happy beyond words to have survived Watergate; by the way, I never planned to do that, and some thought I was appointed Senior Republican as spite by Hugh Scott, who I ran against for leader, not true. But I’m happy to have survived that. I’m happy to have been involved in many, many important issues such as energy, the environment, especially the environment. Ed Muskie was a ferocious liberal Democrat, and he and I used to be in hearings in the Public Works Committee, and we would have difficulties, or at the Executive Session, with our points of view and end up in effect screaming at each other. And our staffs would cringe, but it always turned out to be a productive enterprise, and we were able usually, almost always, to come together on a common of point of view, a bipartisan point of view. So I was lucky to have that opportunity. And then I was lucky to have the opportunity to be leader, Republican leader, and luckier still to retire under my own power, which not everybody does, and to return to private life. And by the way, I never planned, never thought I would ever be any President’s Chief of Staff, and it was totally surprising to me when President Reagan asked me to do it. That’s another story for another time, but I had no idea that he had that in mind till he called. And I was in Florida on a vacation with my family, and he didn’t – my late wife Joy took the phone call, and according to her it went like this. “Joy, where is Howard?” “Mr. President, Howard’s at the zoo with my two grandsons.” And he let – according to her, chuckled and said, “Wait until he sees the zoo I have in mind for him.” Anyway he asked me to come to Washington the next day, and I assumed he wanted me to do something since that was not the high point of the Reagan Presidency. And I marshaled all my arguments for why I couldn’t do whatever it was they wanted me to do. I'd been eighteen years in the Senate, I'd been Republican leader, I had retired under my own power, returned to private life, and was happy. We got to D.C. and were met by a White House car, and taken to the Oval Office, not the Oval Office, to the living quarters, on the second – on the third floor. A little elevator opened and there stood Ronald Reagan. Most people don’t think this is true, but it is the truth. Elevator door opened and there stood Ronald Reagan, who said, “Howard, I have to hire a new Chief of Staff, and I want you to do it.” And I sort of heard myself say, “All right,” and that was the end of my good resolve, but I’m glad I did. I’m really fortunate to have had that opportunity, see the executive’s department up close, to see Ronald Reagan up close under a stressful situation, and lucky as well to have gotten out with my own power. And then I was lucky, of course, to – in a similar way, to not expect to be Ambassador to Japan, and I was determined to turn it down, but I didn’t, and I’m glad I went. My wife Nancy and I are glad we went, and it was a great opportunity. And by the way, I want to tell you, I came away convinced that whatever grandeur and glory MacArthur gets for the war of the Pacific, it is no greater than his organizing and administering the administration of that country after the war. People still to this day in Japan virtually idolize MacArthur, and still to this day, the American Ambassador in Japan is somebody different, and set apart. And that’s remarkable. It’s unexpected and it’s remarkable. By the way, when you present your credentials to the Emperor, the palace sends an eighteenth century coach, gold – gilded coach with uniformed and liveried attendants and horses, and they take you to this palace – and in your cutaway and striped trousers – and you present your credentials. I have a picture of it over there; I’ll show you in a minute. But I was halfway there and I thought, you know, maybe this is the way it ought to be. Maybe this is the way public service ought to be – but that’s not true – but anyway, it was a great, great experience in Japan, and I’m glad I did it. And I continue to believe that MacArthur was great for many reasons, but principally because he successfully administered a difficult country and set it on the right course.
Mr. Campbell: I have one last question. You’ve mentored a great many of the new political leaders in Tennessee. Many that I’m working with in my role today. What kind of guidance would you leave with them on how they should act in the future?
Sen. Baker: I wouldn’t presume to do that. What I do is try to be their friend, share my insights as they ask for it, not to volunteer it unduly, but most of all to say to them what I fundamentally believe, understand you’ll have deep convictions and deep commitments to certain points of view, but it’s the nature of the system that you’ve got to also understand that there must be some room to believe you may not always be right, and you better listen to what the other people have to say before you make a judgment.
Dr. Fitzgerald: One last quick question.
Sen. Baker: There’s always one more.
Dr. Fitzgerald: I was very interested in what you said about where you were when you found out what was going on in Oak Ridge. And which you look at, I think all of us, and certainly in your lifetime, you’ve seen Oak Ridge’s role and how Oak Ridge as a community has evolved, and we currently have the first Oak Ridge mayor in history that has not worked at one of the facilities.
Sen. Baker: I guess that’s right.
Dr. Fitzgerald: And what would you say, what could Oak Ridge do, what would be our role in the future for East Tennessee from your perspective as you’ve seen everything that Oak Ridge has done over the years? What could we do to help continue to improve East Tennessee?
Sen. Baker: Well I think you’re doing it now. I think Oak Ridge has so much to contribute. Not only from a technological standpoint, a great research facility, but the very fact that it exists today is an object lesson in how the system can work, and perhaps the greatest contribution Oak Ridge can make. That is to say that this community grew up out of corn fields, and the super secrecy, but it survived and prospered, and supported its purpose and its facilities, and transitioned then into an essential part of the community, with its own government, with private enterprise, with private development, and you had many entrepreneurs involved in that, and with a great future. That’s what I think.
Mr. Smith: One last response.
Sen. Baker: There’s always one more.
Mr. Smith: We’ve asked a lot of questions. Been very probing in some of them. But we may not have hit on some of the things that in your mind you would like to share about Oak Ridge. So, if there’s any last thoughts that we haven’t gotten to in our questions, feel free to give us any thoughts you have.
Sen. Baker: Well my grandson’s there now. He is an intern in the computer center, having completed or about to complete his master’s degree in engineering, and I’m happy to say he came up this weekend on his birthday. I sometimes think he did it because Huntsville’s closer than Nashville, but in any event he came up, and it’s clear to me that he really enjoyed Oak Ridge as a community, and I’m delighted. Not only because of his proximity to me but because I think it shows good judgment on his part. There. That’ll do.
[end of recording]